


What Cannot Be

by tea_tales_and_whales



Category: Dishonored
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-23
Updated: 2014-12-23
Packaged: 2018-03-03 00:15:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2831162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tea_tales_and_whales/pseuds/tea_tales_and_whales
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, Lord Pendleton dreams about being a child again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Cannot Be

Sometimes, Lord Pendleton dreams about being a child again. Only it's different. He's still small and slender, but no longer sickly. He's compact and flushed healthily with youthful joy. He's never known cruelty or hate at the hands of his older brothers. Instead, he walks between them, his hands clasped in theirs which bear the scars of their separation at birth. They don't love him the way they breathe for one another, but he's the baby brother they'll allow in the space between them and that means everything.

They walk with him on the grounds of their vast estate, chatter light and playful. Swing him clear over puddles from recent rain until he half believes he can fly, and crouch to help him find ever-elusive frogs in the flower beds. They pick him up and charge back to the house when they're summoned to supper. They ruffle his hair while they help spoon helpings from over large tureens of Pendleton silver onto his plate. They all have to be gently scolded by their mother several times not to talk with their mouths full, but she smiles at their boyish elation, and their father laughs outright.

 It's merry and sweet and little Treavor can hardly bear to go to bed before his brothers - he's five now! He should get to stay up too! - but they promise to tell him stories, and he concedes. They tell him such tales of pirates and whales, daring rogues and highway men, brave admirals on their ships in the sea as they tuck him in bed with his little glass-eyed stuffed bear and kiss him goodnight on the brow, once each, imitating how their mother sends each one of them off slumber.

Lord Pendleton wakes in his dank, chill room at the Hound Pits, tears hot on his cheeks, and he stifles a low moan of agony at the way his heart aches in his thin, reedy chest. It's only later, when Wallace comes unbidden to his bed, somehow summoned by the untold knowledge that he is needed, and holds his master close that Treavor realizes the manservant featured nowhere in his dream. Fresh sobs arise anew, and he buries he face into Wallace's neck when he realizes that that's the part that hurts the most.


End file.
